My Brilliant Friend

L'amica geniale

Only if you are a woman will you know these ugly secrets. Two women, 50 years of friendship and war. In the past five years, almost all European and American readers are talking about her,
A global bestseller with over a million copies translated into 40 languages, Financial Times Woman of the Year 2015
2016 Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World"
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My Brilliant Friend, the first in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet, tells the story of the teenage years of two heroines, Lila and Elena. The story begins with Elena, already a successful and renowned figure, receiving a call from Lila's son, Rino, who reports that his mother has vanished. Elena, reminded of Lila's prophecy about her own fate, writes the story of their lives...
Lila and Elena grew up together in a run-down neighborhood in Naples. They were inseparable and trusted each other, but they also regarded each other as their own secret mirror, secretly competing with each other.
Lila is smart and beautiful. She can confront bullies without fear and ask for the toys stolen from her by the feared Achille Karach. Elena envies Lila's academic talent and extraordinary determination, but she also secretly imitates her.
Lila's family doesn't support her studies, so she works as a helper in the shoe repair shop her father and brother struggle to maintain, facing the pursuit of several wealthy young men. Elena, with love, jealousy, and understanding for her friend, continues her studies on her own, but she can never face the loss of competing with Lila.
Finally, sixteen-year-old Lila decides to marry the butcher, but at the wedding banquet, she discovers her husband's betrayal. Elena, on the threshold of adulthood, worries about her future and is at a loss because of her vague affection for the avant-garde Nino.
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Famous commentators: Ferrante turns the love, separation and reunion between two poor urban girls into a tragedy of the city they live in.
—The New York Times
Elena Greco is a survivor who must survive the drama of attachment and detachment, with a survivor's shame, as if she had stolen the promise of wealth from Lila's treasure trove.
—The New Yorker
Like Sophocles or Ovid, Ferrante deals with fate. Lila is a demiurge, a mythical figure.
—The Atlantic Monthly
Anxiety, fatigue, menstruation... Ferrante explores all the themes we fear. The women she portrays experience abandonment, injustice, and turbulent emotions firsthand—they are no longer seen as weaknesses, but as facts.
—The New Republic
Like Kafka, Ferrante lays bare the inner world of her protagonists.
—The Guardian
My Brilliant Friend is a coming-of-age novel in monophonic rather than binaural form; we realize early on that Lila is trapped in her own world, while the author, Elena, will break free from it.
——The Times Literary Supplement

2017-01-01

人民文学出版社

330

9787020120130